Meeting of Cultures and Architectural Dialogue: The Example of the Dominicans in Taiwan

Abstract

This article introduces how, even if in a context refractory to the Gospel, the evangelization of the Dominicans started a kind of dialogue between the symbols embodied in the Catholic cosmology and the ones belonging to the traditional Taiwanese culture. The opposition of the local population to the presence of Westerners, and the fact that the Dominicans, being Spaniards, did not benefit from the protection of France, as happened for other religious orders working in China, are all factors that impacted the evangelization carried out by the Dominicans, and they have prevented the Christian message from taking a hegemonic position in Taiwanese culture. By observing better, however, the places and buildings affected by the missionaries’ evangelization, one can read the traces of a fruitful dialogue between the teaching of the missionaries, and therefore of the Catholic cosmology that they were bringing, and the artistic and architectonic cultural heritage of the Taiwanese tradition. Both public places, such as churches, and private places, such as houses of converts, show signs of the adaptation of Catholicism to local tradition, and likewise signs that local culture began to accept Christian symbols and cosmology.